THE STREAM

I bought the water because I was eating and I thought "I'm supposed to drink something too, right?"  So I have the water and I'm just carrying it with me.  Carrying it around unopened.

I'm so tired.  I'm bone tired.  I'm dead tired.  I'm even SO tired of being tired, and TALKING about being tired.  I'm tired of the way it shows on my face.  "You look different," yes I know, you know what it is?  I'm older.  I'm very suddenly older.  "Your eyes are so red," yes, I know.  I've stopped trying to figure it out.  I'm greyer, I'm circled and lined.  More now than before.

I'm tired of carrying this bottle around.  This spring water.  This miracle of the world when you think about it and when you look at it from the perspective of the other 90% of the world--I'm one of the ten percent with an unwanted miracle-bottle of unbelievably clean water.  I can't just throw it away just because I'm sick of carrying it.  That would be sin itself, right?

So I return it to the inventory.  I place it in a pile of water bottles of a different brand at a different store miles from where I bought it.

What's going to happen?  Does anyone ever just give back something they don't want anymore?  How often does that happen?  And what are they going to do--at Starbucks--when someone tries to buy the bottle of water that they don't sell?  And if the person who wants to buy it finds out they don't sell it are they going to want it anymore?  Even if it's free?  "Take it" they'll say and the person will frown and say "well can you give me one that I can actually buy?  I don't want this one if it's free."

Maybe it is only good if it costs something.